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Keir Starmer, it turns out, is at his best in a crisis. He has faced two since he became prime minister last year, one domestic, the other international. The first came with the riots that followed the Southport killings, when Starmer’s response was impressive and effective. The second is Donald Trump’s attempt to stitch up … Read more

You know we’re in trouble when Fox News emerges as the great defender of freedom of the press. But such was the case when Jacqui Heinrich, a senior political correspondent at Fox, responded to the news that Trump’s White House would now handpick the reporters who get to cover the president in small settings, with … Read more

Three days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, created a £100bn special fund to modernise Germany’s armed forces. Vladimir Putin’s aggression, he told a stunned Bundestag in explanation, meant that Europe was living through a Zeitenwende, or turning point. Mr Scholz was right. But it has taken the … Read more

There are only so many times Donald Trump can be offered a state and royal visit to temper his political tantrums. With his latest attacks on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the halting of aid to Ukraine, it’s already clear that not even the offer of a bed for the night at Balmoral has worked. The silver … Read more

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/mar/05/nicola-jennings-europe-rearmament-keir-starmer-defence-cartoon

Britain is now on a “war footing”, we are told. Earlier this year, Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, demanded that European nations start hiking defence spending at the expense of pensions, health and social security. Fail to do so, he warned, and the only recourse would be to “get out your Russian language courses or … Read more

The first time I went to Hanau, I was creeped out by how ordinary it was. This mid-sized city of 100,000 people right in the geographical centre of Germany, looked and felt like many other places in western Germany I had been to: built around a bombed and reconstructed old town, expanded by a soulless … Read more

In the Four Quartets TS Eliot wrote “humankind cannot bear very much reality”. At moments in history like these, when there is simply too much head-spinning change and too many postwar assumptions being ripped from their moorings, it sometimes appears too much for any human to absorb, let alone offer a response. In particular in … Read more

How long do Ukraine and Europe have to respond to US betrayal? When Russia launched its full-scale invasion three years ago, each day that Kyiv held out was a victory. The west rallied to Ukraine’s support at equally remarkable speed. Now, as the Trump administration turns upon the victim, and embraces the aggressor, Europe is accelerating … Read more

For Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this is no time to grovel. After last Friday’s ambush in the Oval Office – where the Ukrainian president, who has led his country in resistance to three years of brutal Russian aggression, was beaten up in public by Donald Trump and JD Vance – some European leaders, including Keir Starmer and … Read more